


These Hounds of Hell Advance

by threefacade



Series: American Pandemonium [1]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angels are Dicks, M/M, Other, and other tunes to smite things to, put that thing back where it came from or so help me, slow burn hokey pokey, that violence tag's specifically for ch 4 congratulations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-03-21 12:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13741014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threefacade/pseuds/threefacade
Summary: Some angels saunter vaguely downwards, others burn the stairway on the way down. After almost a decade of living in the city and playing nurse, Worth gets a case of the fuck-its and starts getting more involved when Hanna brings a certain guest back to the clinic.  In hindsight, he should have been playing field medic to begin with.Demons/Angels AU.





	1. Ash Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, roughly 3-4 years ago, I wrote "Sympathy for the Devil". Then I went to college, and had the misfortune of reading that unfinished piece with a good pair of grown eyeballs. So now we're here, rewriting things.

  There are three things in life that Worth is very sure about, and they are the only three things he can count on being true: One, Mick Jagger could shut his fish-lipped ass up _damn_ well anytime he pleased. Two, it takes exactly four runes that read like phoenician cursive to knock him out for a week. Three, Pandemonium is not a place in hell, it is a place where he lives when _they_ bring in wounded supernatural creatures who don’t want to be there.

  Combine these three things, and there is the disaster-algebra that has Worth swearing a blue streak and threatening to murder the next person who so much as flinches in his periphery.

  It’s Wednesday when he wakes up, but it damn well wasn’t Tuesday when he passed out. He also has no recollection of being adjacent to his desk, face dangerously close to a pot of nothing but dirt and dead ficus. The radio plays, and he knows he _definitely_ didn’t leave that on before a drug-addled _lights out_ session. The Rolling Stones still drone on, and if that was the end of it, he could have laid there in abject rage until the magic-hangover passed and he was aware enough to turn off the radio like a respectable human being. Instead, he reaches above himself, his hand slap-fondling the desk for anything particularly solid, and returning with a stapler. As a projectile, it makes an awkward and heavy arc before clattering unsuccessfully against the radio and knocking it off the shelf. Still, the music plays.

  “Y’know, for being at floor level, I would’ve thought you’d just hit the wall.” A voice comes, Worth instantly recognizing Hanna and feeling some Pavlovian response to raise his hand up, just above the potted plant, and turns his open palm to face the mage. He then snaps it into a fist. A signal. _Shut your fucking mouth, Cross._

  He staggers to his feet, but stays in his usual shitty posture, eyes narrowed to account for the bodies in the clinic. A single redhead, shrugging back at him. A zombie, looking concerned and probably considering the idea of asking too many questions. A vampire, looking at him with a mangled sense of disgust and possibly worry. A something, bleeding heavily from the abdomen and standing alone in the back of the cluster.

  There isn’t usually a _something._ That’s a new face.

  “Who in th’ fresh hell is that.”

  The something fidgets, but doesn’t answer. Something about the milky eyes and their thousand-yard stare sets Worth off, just a bit. Unnerving in the way that seeing blood should be, but this time, it’s the fucking eyes that get him. A tall thing that looks more like it’s wearing a human for a suit than an actual human. The way the abdomen blisters and bleeds doesn’t instill much hope in him, either.

  “Oh, we don’t know, he doesn’t talk or have a name. Picked him out of the gutter nearby my apartment, y’know? Where Blaney goes to smoke sometimes?” Hanna goes on, motor-mouthing away to cover his ass. “He’s bleeding real bad, and I’m pretty sure dying in a gutter _sucks,_ so. Here we are! You have an open exam room, right? Not too hungover to do me a favor?”

  Worth stares, leaning on the desk. He _is_ too hungover for this shit, effectively. But, the silence of this bleeding thing only makes his suspicion worsen. He goes down the line of questioning, ignoring the promise of a favor and turning to Conrad. If anyone has any gripes with this, it’d be him.

  “For once in m’ fuckin’ life, I need ya t’ priss out on me and complain. Does it _really_ not speak?” the question is harsh, as he stays unflinchingly close to the desk. Conrad gives a glance back at the bleeding whatever behind Hanna, and shoots Hanna a look.

  “As far as I know,” Conrad says slowly, “it hasn’t made a sound.”

  Worth sucks air through his teeth, hard enough to make an audible whistle. He pulls his coat off the back of his chair, putting it on in some strange languid motion, gesturing to the back room. Oddly silent, enough so to warrant a trio of cautious glances. He hopes that whatever this thing is stays fucking still and quiet, but who knows. This could be how he dies, hungover and flayed by some monster living in Hanna’s gutter. Worth snorts at the thought, ghosting into the exam room as the zombie leads the inhuman-whatever-the-fuck into the room and onto the table. It lies unflinchingly still, to Worth’s slightly belated relief.

  “Th’ fuck is it, anyways?” He says, not directed to anyone in particular as he digs through a mangled bag of medical supplies. Some scalpels and a single quasi-rusted bonesaw that only rusted in the “unimportant” parts. Gauze, medical tape, peroxide, iodine-

  “I remember reading a book, one of Hanna’s, that mentioned something like this. Something like an angel.” The zombie says, pensive. Worth freezes, hands holding to the bottle of iodine the way someone would hold a weapon. “It _does_ keep looking up, anyways. I thought that was something angels do.”

  “Orestes- I _really_ doubt it’s an angel. Where’s the wings, the halo, the thousand flaming eyes? It could just be a wraith with a concussion for all we know.” Hanna argues back, a little confused by the line of thought. The thought of a concussed wraith is enough to get a bark of a laugh from Worth, taking the iodine and covering the not-angel’s wound with clear lacking precision.

  “Could be wearin’ a meatsuit fer all we know.” Worth mutters, looking up from his work to a silent trio, moderately taken aback by the matter-of-fact venom in his voice.

  “What the absolute _fuck_ does that mean, Worth?” Conrad shoots back, first to come to terms with the paranoia in the room. Worth makes a point of brandishing his scalpel like a baton, pointing back at Conrad.

  “Means what it means. Ya really think that angels would come t’ this place an’ march around like freaks on parade?” He shifts his gaze to Orestes in this case. “I’m sayin’ I agree that this ain’t yer normal haunt. An’ if it _was_ a wraith that ya woke me up for, I’ll fight all three a’ ya, personally.”

  He looks back down to his work, the wound hissing and sizzling but the sound remaining absent from the mystery patient’s throat. That level of silence begs him not to let his guard down. Applying sutures to the wound is an easy task for the sober and sure- both of which are the antithesis of his being at the moment.

  It doesn’t scream when the third suture breaks skin, no. Screaming would be natural and show signs of humanity. When the thing under his hands writhes, it _shrieks,_ lamprey-mouthed and howling into the echochamber of the exam room. The sound drives everyone to flinch in some way or another, and Worth knows damn well that this isn’t some stupid fucking wraith. When the screeching fades, it is a voice like shattered glass muttering nothing but a single word.

_Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy_

  Worth draws his hands away from this _thing,_ this angel, this angel-wearing-human-flesh and acts on an impulse, taking the scalpel back in his hand like a last resort in defense.

  “You fuckers _owe me_ fer this!” He yells over the droning prayer, giving a look that begs someone to say something. “A fucking seraphim! In my clinic-“

  “What’s it matter?” Conrad asks, stepping forward a little bit. “Should be the same as anything, right? Just finish stitching it up so it can go back to doing whatever it’s supposed to do and _shut up._ ”

  “Oh, so go back t’ possessin’ priests and walkin’ around looking fer things t’ judge?” Worth snaps, defensive. His hand braces the shoulder of the seraph, the heel of his palm digging hard. “Give me one good reason why I should trust this _thing_ not t’ up an’ kill everyone in this room. Every undead, every mage, every hedonistic bastard.”

  The air is slick with tension, and everyone stares in silence.  As if silence is capable with the way it screams, how deep the wound is, how much blood is lost, how damn well condemnable everyone in the room is. On the aspect of holiness, nobody has any right to feel safe. On the aspect of life, the vessel would die without the host. Two lives for four. Worth does the math on his own accord.

  “You’re not suggesting we _kill_ it?” Hanna says, quiet. Always a saint, isn’t he. Always looking to protect and defend the helpless, never watching his back-

  “Not like yer th’ one with th’ holy gun in yer hands.” Worth spits out, eyes fixated on the eyes of the seraphim. “Whoever it’s wearin’ is long dead.”

  “How can you be sure it won’t fight back?” Orestes asks, standing between Hanna and the table, cautious.

  “I ain’t an expert. It probably will.” Worth says, near-resignation.

  “And you can handle it?” Conrad asks, something more worried and skeptical than a challenge, but Worth takes it that way on his own accord. He loves a good challenge, at least, that would be the idea.

  “I’m a man a’ many surprises, miss priss. Some things they can’t teach at Langone.” Worth grins, maybe a little too-cocksure. He looks over his scalpel for a moment, assured that whatever cut it makes is going to be ugly and crooked and just the right amount of bastard to prove something awful. When it comes down, there’s a sulfuric arterial spray, and the world's most heinous wounded screech.

  One final, blaring _holy_ , and the lights in the exam room spike in brightness, then shatter.

 

* * *

 

  “What did you _do?”_ Conrad asks, hands curled into white-knuckled fists. He’s definitely shaken when they leave the burnt outline of the body in the exam table, Hanna dusting the glass from his shoulders and giving the exam table a look around. Worth tosses him the scalpel, a limp projectile. Conrad grabs at it with a nervous swat and looks at Worth, nonplussed and pissed all the same. “Don’t _throw_ shit at me!”

  Worth shrugs. “Ya actually caught it, though. Color me impressed.” His hand gestures at the scalpel, signifying _turn it over_ in the laziest nonverbal way he can muster. Conrad does so, only to be greeted by a barrage of runes from what could only really be Aramaic descent scratched into the spine of the blade.

  “What _is_ this?” He asks, more or less suspicious of the meaning behind the runes and why exactly Worth knew it’d have an effect on something like a giant nightmare angel when it was in a nice little human coat.

  “Hanna’s been bringin’ all types a’ shit int’ my clinic fer almost a decade. If I didn’ arm myself with that, we’d probably all be dead by now.” Worth leans on his desk mid-lecture, giving his presence a sense of smugness not usually obtained in a normal conversation. “It won’t kill, but it _does_ force shit t’ leave if it ain’t got a corporeal form of it’s own.”

  “All clear! I think. Hopefully. Mostly.”

  The exam room door swings shut, and Hanna returns to the main lobby, hammer swinging in his hand. He looks fairly chipper, despite the whole _“An angel just pretty much vaporized an entire corpse when it got let out”_ deal, as he had explained it earlier.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s had that since we met. I gave it to him after he helped out with some ghost-related stuff. Pretty sure that’s why he hates ghosts, now.” Hanna says, mimicking Worth’s posture on the desk. Conrad gives him a look, something between “What aren’t you telling me” and “I can’t fucking believe you two”, only prompted by Orestes finally mentioning something non-angel related.

  “You mentioned Langone.”

  The silence is a bit odd, Worth squinting at the zombie like the city name reads like a bloody hex on his person. Hanna’s the first to speak, eyes wide with a realization Worth would have been damn well pleased had he not made it.

  “Wait, _wait._ Langone like _NYU_ Langone? Dude, have you been sitting here this whole time having gone to-“

  “Yer pushin’ yer luck with my patience.” Worth mutters, heel of his palm driving into the bridge of his nose. Too much information for anyone to know. Damn well not an option.

  “I’m pretty sure he just said whatever college came to mind.” Conrad snorts to himself, then realizes the reaction from Worth isn’t something like unabashed chaotic pride, but a spiraling sense of disgust and _maybe_ embarrassment if you squint enough. This, Conrad recognizes, is both hilarious and a perfect sense of leverage. “Holy shit. You _did_ go to NYU, didn’t you?”

  Worth pulls his hand from his face and looks at the ceiling, counting every cobweb and spidering crack as a means to steady himself. This whole morning, or night, it’s not as if he really knows what the time is- has been incredibly taxing. He looks back to the others with a sneer, something a little extra hostile for all the badgering he endures.

  “I don’ think it matters shit if I went t’ Langone seein’ how we know damn well I thought their degree program was bullshit. Besides, th’ internet exists, books exist, ya can teach yourself damn near anythin’.”

  “Like that time you had Lamont buy you some books on surgery?” Hanna asks, clearly amused by the whole ordeal. Worth snorts at that, a little too amused for his own good.

  “He wussed out. I just googled it.”

  At that, Conrad places the scalpel on the desk, raising his hands in a type of defeat that begged God for everyone in the room to shut up and turn it down. “We’ve reached critical levels of insanity tonight, and I’m afraid if we keep going on like this, we’re going to learn more about him. And it’ll be awful, and _maybe_ make me wish I was deaf?”

  “My sister’s a swimsuit model.” Worth says, unblinking and expressionless, invoking an asinine sort of answer to a game of twenty questions nobody volunteered to play. If they know one thing about him, might as well milk it and mess with their heads some more.

   “ _And_ that’s it. We’re leaving, I’m leaving, I don’t need to know that about you. I really don’t. It’s the _furthest_ thing from a necessity that I need to know tonight. _Goodnight.”_  Conrad turns on his heel, exasperated disgust- freezing when Worth immediately corrects him with “ _Good morning”_ only to be a contrary pain in the ass. He leaves, either way, vaguely cautious when opening the clinic door. It’s pitch black, the height of midnight according to Hanna, who seems to follow behind Conrad with Orestes in tow, taking his lead. When they’re gone, Worth is left alone again in the clinic.

  He _better_ be fucking alone in the clinic.  



	2. Situational Literacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Book club, except nobody wants to be here and everyone's still a little shaken up over a certain self-immolating angel.

  He didn’t volunteer himself for a library session in the cramped space of Hanna’s apartment, but that’s what Worth gets for thinking an in-person blood delivery is that simple. Next time, if anyone wants anything, they come to him. That’s final even if nobody agreed when he blurted out his the new rule in the kitchen of the apartment, pawing through the cabinets for any sort of booze he could take as leverage. He finds nothing of interest, and sits himself in a chair next to Conrad, feet on the table.

  “You really take up the most space possible wherever you go, don’t you?” Conrad asks, agitation in his voice and a blatant sense of disgust in the way he looks at Worth’s boots kicked up next to an old religious textbook. It gets a snort in response, nothing much else. However, he does sling a bag of blood in his direction after a few moments, almost as if he forgot about it entirely upon entering the apartment. Conrad takes it cautiously in his hands, glancing between the bag and Worth as if he was looking for some ulterior motive. The search is pointless, and the look on Worth’s face proves it. Absolute boredom and a subtle touch of irritation.

 “Glad to see you two getting… along-ish. No punching or yelling is good.” Hanna says, scratching the back of his neck. The two of them shoot him a look that begs for silence, but Worth comments fastest.

 “Th’ fuck am I here for? Ya don’ pay me enough so I can _read_ t’ yer soddin’ ass.”

 “It’s impressive that you can read.” Conrad replies, laughing to himself behind the bag of blood, and rather than a sidewinding elbow to the ribs, Worth sits up and moves his feet from the table only to give a not-so-light kick to the shin. He’s grinning, though- snickering like an idiot when he gets kicked in response.

 “Sobriety makes ya do some crazy shit.” Worth says, tilting back in the chair. “Like come t’ a book club ya don’ wanna be at.”

 Hanna huffs under his breath, something about being teased and about a jerk and Worth raises an eyebrow, not like he can really hear- but he likes to pretend that he caught the tinge of disbelief in his voice. Hanna claps his hands together soon after, redirecting the conversation.

 “Even if he was totally _illiterate_ I would have made him come here, somehow.” Hanna says, grinning and happy to be a part of this makeshift game they’ve made over the concept of plausible illiteracy. Worth stares hard at him, face twinging with the ghost of forced nothingness and Conrad’s brow quirked up at the sheer mystery of that logic.

 “That makes absolutely no sense.”

 “Not a fuckin’ single thing ya said makes sense.”

 Their quasi-unison is just near-reality jarring enough, leaving them partially quiet for a moment before Worth gives another swift kick to the shin to distract from the jinx. Conrad follows suit, as if to instinctively fill the void.

  “I mean, Worth is pretty solid about angels and all that, so with him here, our research should be easy.” Hanna finishes explaining, dumping a few textbooks onto the table with all the grace of a shitty jenga tower. “Like, what, aren’t you Catholic? Something like that?”

  Worth ignores the question, and opens one of the smaller books, bringing it up to his face to signify that he’s _definitely_ ignoring the question. If he fakes being busy, someone will take the hint and shut up and-

 “I heard you speak like, fluent Latin once.”

   “Hanna, ya know damn well th’ most religion I have is that I became an ordained minister _specifically_ t’ excommunicate ya every time ya broke a bone more than once a month.” Worth says, peering over the top of the book.  “Pretty sure ya hallucinated th’ Latin bit.”

   Hanna stops, hands dropping onto the table with a dramatic slam.

 “ _That’s_ what that stupid certificate behind your desk is? This whole time, I thought you were joking about the excommunication thing.”

 “I also do mitzvahs.”

 “Wrong religion.” Conrad says under his breath, taking another book from the pile and turning it in his hand. “Is there a reason you picked out the world’s most inane young-adult novel to add to this new age self-help hellscape? Or was that a mistake?”

  “Look, I’ve never even seen an angel before last night, and after watching Worth have to apparently do the inverse of his debatable churchly duty and go all hunter on an angel, I honestly don’t know what we’re expecting. We need all the possible ideas we can get.” Hanna finally sits at the other end of the table, beckoning his zombie counterpart over from an adjacent filing cabinet- his gloved hands filled with manilla folders and loose sheets of runes and other parts of the magical menagerie.

  “On account a’ not subjectin’ myself t’ more bullshit than necessary, I veto th’ sheer possibility a’ having t’ read that. Files, fine. A goddamn vampire-fucker book? I draw th’ line.” Worth gestures to the book Conrad’s holding- or, was holding- as it clatters back onto the table at the mention of vampire fucking in a pavlovian response. Worth snorts at the motion, patting the book with an exaggerated sense of mock-affection. Conrad takes one of the folders and thumbs through it, shoulders rigid, ignoring the commentary as if it didn’t just happen.

  “Alright, fine. Since you’re apparently _ordained_ and know a weird amount of information about angels, what would you say, father?” Hanna makes a cross gesture with his hands, signifying the extent of the joke. Worth raises his brow, smirking to project that the joke itself was a mistake.

 “It‘s too churchy an’ formal, I’d prefer ya call me d-“

 The word doesn’t so much as get it’s first syllable out before Conrad thrusts his leg against the chair, kicking hard enough to send it careening away from the table with all the misplaced vampiric strength he could muster. Worth sits, blinking confusion as to how he ended up a foot away from the table itself before standing and dragging the chair even more heinously close to Conrad. Subtle punishment for the shutting down of a perfectly fine god awful joke. It takes a full minute for Hanna’s laughter to die town, his hand up to signify that no, _really,_ he’s done.

 “Anyways. I can tell ya that there are orders a’ angels. Angels, archangels, powers, some other fucking classes I don’t remember an’ really don’ give a rat’s ass about, cherubim, seraphim.” Worth counts them off on his hand, one by one, skipping a couple fingers to show some leeway for whatever orders he may have forgotten in the explanation. “An’ if any one a’ you have read a goddamn book in yer life, ya would know these things hate us and th’ shit we stand for.”

 The tonal shift comes out of almost nowhere, from uninterested and generally speaking down to a hint of unbridled disgust and possible ghosts of anxiety from the previous night.

  “Pseudo-Dionysius.” He adds, bathing in the awkward silence following his outburst. “It‘s his theory, don’ look at me like that.”

 “You really _do_ know your stuff, huh?” Hanna says, head cocked with some befuddled amusement. “See, I _told_ them you’d be pretty helpful.”

 “Helpful’s a bit of a stretch. You’re one tin foil hat away from a conspiracy theory, Worth.” Conrad says, flat and slightly off put by Hanna’s complete disregard for the commentary about angels- actual, holy beings- wanting their entire group dead. The thought of soldiers of God feeling that way doesn’t sit well, and the thought of being a target is downright depressing.

 “What, am I wrong? We got a magician, dead man walkin’, and a creature of th’ night-“

 “Do _not_ call me that.” Conrad interrupts, and Worth shoots him a glance before continuing, clearly not going to stop any time soon.

 “Out a’ th’ four of us, nobody’s going t’ end up going anywhere good. That’s all I’m sayin’.” He places his hands up, dismissive and blunt all at once. Hanna fidgets in his seat, and flips through a few pages of the book, trying to ignore the comment. Doomsaying isn’t really his cup of tea, and he’s damn sure there’s another answer about the order of seraphim, somewhere.    Damocles shuffles in the back of the apartment, mostly ignoring the conflict at the table in search for something, only to have Hanna join him, almost evasively.

 “Did something happen?” He asks, quiet. Hanna shakes his head, thumbing through the book left open on the shelf.

 “No, nothing out of the usual. But, you said something about angels the other day- do you remember where that book was?” Hanna asks, setting the book back down with a disgruntled sigh. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t like not knowing what’s up. All this just _spells_ bad mojo, y’know?”

 Damocles nods, almost sagely without much of a verbal response.

 “I can’t remember the title or the cover, but it was small. About the size of that book you looked through.”

 The two of them start to search, some sort of pattern where Hanna takes a book from the shelf, comparing it to the reference before discarding it onto the floor or handing it to Damocles, the former usually happening more often.

 When the tenth book clatter-platters it’s way to the discard pile, Damocles makes a point in slipping Hanna a smaller book from a higher shelf. The only distinction from the others comes from the staple binding and the way it was slid on top of the other perfectly stashed books, as if someone had deliberately meant to keep it out of the order.

 “This may have been it, but I don’t remember putting it there.” Damocles stares at the book, then back at the space in the shelf. Bickering at the table subsides, and Worth stands, hands clapping flat against the table.

 “Well, if we’re done playin’ book club, I’ve got business to attend to.”

 Hanna squints, looking at the pile of books, the booklet, and back to Worth. He holds the book up, brandishing it cover-first like a mythical tool.

 “Oh, yeah? Maybe you want to help us with this, mister “I Apparently Am A Very Knowledgeable Priest Now?” Hanna says, getting a flat stare from both parties at the table, Conrad reflecting a cross between subtle amusement and blank confusion.

 “It’s fuckin’ Paradise Lost. Not even th’ whole thing. What’re you gonna do, make me read some protestant literature fer ya? I’m _busy.”_ Worth states, shrugging his coat back on over his shoulders.

 “I’ll use a ouija board and have a seance with John Milton’s ghost!” Hanna blurts, opening the book to the first section. “I’ll invoke a muse!”

  “Yeah, you do any a’ that bullshit an’ I’ll kick your ass three ways t’ Sunday. Or I’ll let Milton make you suffer, less work fer me when you punish yourself.” Worth shrugs, giving a flippant wave of the hand.

  “How the hell does that even count as punishment, what does that even mean?” Conrad chides, digging for more answers where real answers don’t really exist. Worth is already at the door before he gets any real answer, but on the way out, stops in the doorway to light a cigarette and make a point of answering the question.

  “Th’ punishment is havin’ t’ spell out all of that shit regarding Milton wanting t’ fuck th’ devil.”

   The front door shuts before anyone can reiterate, leaving the remaining researchers standing in a wretched sense of befuddlement and slight creeping regret, even for a moment.

 On the other side of the door, Worth makes his beeline for the clinic, making damn sure to walk that stretch from the apartment as quickly as he can at what he guesses to be roughly thirty-past midnight. People get stabby around that time in the area, and he frankly, doesn’t enjoy having to clean up stab wounds. Especially not his own.

 Right before he reaches the alley, he swears something is staring at him. Not in an “opossum in the dumpster eating from a discarded can of tuna” sort of way, but in the eldritch way that makes his skin crawl. Turning around proves there to be nothing, and he presses his back to the clinic door. Something, he knows, is out to get him. Either that, or sobriety really is a tricky bitch, and he should cut their relationship short the second he gets inside.

 He digs through his coat pocket for a pill bottle long since missing it’s cap, and draws out two smaller futhark-esque runes before slapping them against the door. In the moment they spark to life with some white hot flash, he knows damn well there is a set of several eyes staring back at him from the fire escape of the adjacent building. They stay unblinking, fixated on himself rather than the rune on the door, as if they are entirely adverse to the light and the shape it forms. He gestures back, hand patting the door before turning to open it with only a snide comment as he leaves the alley and it’s eyes in the dark:

    “ _Memento mori,_ motherfucker.”


	3. "Sacred Heart" and Other Terrible Names for a Clinic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babysitting and backtracking on supposed backstories, and the sense that something is going to hell.

   “I’m not staying here because I enjoy your company, but because I don’t have a fucking  _ clue  _ what you and Hanna have been on about this whole week.” Conrad is very terse in the explanation of exactly  _ why  _ he stays despite the off-center swimsuit calendars from 1994 still hanging on the wall gawking at him with a menacing sort of stupid around what he can only guess are fake certificates and diplomas. Including one, he learned, that does in fact, establish Worth as a minister- air quotes applicable.

   Worth ignores him, mostly. More concerned with pouring a certain amount of a mystery drink from one unlabeled bottle into a flask, he speaks almost directly to his desk. 

   “I don’t got a clue what t’ tell you. Angels are bastard-coated-bastards, and we’re up shit creek until Hanna figures out where they’re comin’ from. Plus, yer a beacon of unholy energy, so they can’t go flauntin’ you like some fag flare gun.” 

  Conrad stares hard, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You are, quite literally, the worst person I’ve met.”

  “Good t’ know I’m number one in someone’s book.” Worth says, screwing the flask shut before chunking it into a desk drawer and looking up at Conrad, grinning slightly. “And now I gotta babysit. No fuckin’ colorin’ books, either.” 

  Conrad ignores the comment, prefering to sidestep the desk and sit adjacent to a wall of shelves and filing cabinets, taking note of a weird number of Penny Dreadful type books and the occasional religious text. Maybe a bible or two, some pamphlets talking about how you’re going to hell and God can’t save you- pockmarked with cigarette burns, even. A cookbook, two books on surgery with dog-eared tabs, and what only vaguely looks like a dictionary. Everything on this shelf is coated in a layer of dust and only raises more questions. 

  The silence is absolutely boring as shit, and between both men, the shared sense of nervous idling only made it worse. Clearly Hanna would hunt for an angel, some seraph, and they would have to wait on the result. Sit here and twiddle their fucking thumbs until something happens, or in Worth’s case: rifle through desk drawers as loudly as possible searching for near-imaginary bullshit.  There’s a solid four  _ thwacks  _ and muddled swears before Conrad speaks up again.

  “Are you  _ trying  _ to be obnoxious, or do you just want attention?” 

   “Trying to find- nevermind.” He cuts himself off fairly short, looking up from his rummaging and staring fairly flat. “What do you want?”

   Conrad pauses, then looks back to the books. “What’s with the dictionary? We both know you wouldn’t touch one unless it was going to spit money at you.”

   Worth gets a laugh out of that, the honesty entirely spot on. He knows damn well that it’s the truth, and he shrugs. “It ain’t a real dictionary. Go on, fuck with it, I dare ya.”

   Conrad refuses to move for a moment, before curiosity gets the best of him, and he prys it from the shelf to reveal that it is much lighter than a dictionary of that size should be. Upon opening it, he physically recoils in surprise, before holding up the contents of the hollowed out book in his hand.

  “Firecrackers, really?” He asks, holding up a triad of quarter sticks. “You keep firecrackers in a hollowed out dictionary.”

  Worth nods, with a very strong sense of self-assured conscience. “Lamont refused to get me some actual grenades, or normal dynamite fer that matter, so we’ll make do with what distractions we got.”

  Conrad immediately shuts the dictionary. Nope, he certainly didn’t hear shit about black market explosives, and he will forever be happier wiping that thought from his mind. It returns to it’s spot on the shelf, but the curiosity doesn’t subside. He can’t shove it down- he blames knowing more about him in slightly weirder, larger increments in the past week.

  “Did you actually go to Langone, or were you really selling the fucking with us angle, the other night?”

  Worth stops dead in his tracks, mutters a swear or seven in a crash-course of noise, then finally addresses the elephant in the room. “ _ Ish.  _ What makes ya want t’ know so bad, huh?”

  Conrad shrugs. “You tell me, you’re the cryptid of the group, and you might damn well be the only quantifiably normal person here, without all that supernatural-whatever everyone else seems to have.”

  He laughs at that, the idea of being a cryptid for the sake of normalcy, then at the idea that he registers as a “Normal” sort of person. Funny, how that seems to work. “Ain’t nobody got time t’ know about my bullshit, simple.”

  “That was an affront to the English language, and you know it. Also, what did  _ ish  _ mean?” Conrad responds, ignoring the idea that Worth keeps to himself simply because nobody asks while he dodges questions and ducks out of spaces when things get too personal.

  “Means I got frustrated with clinical shit an’ dropped out. How many people can ya watch die before y’ want t’ beat yer skull in with a piece of rebar?” He sounds almost distant, and then comes closer to sit in a chair nearby the living-waiting-room that had been mostly unused for the past few months. “And then there was a big fuckin’ fuss over some quarentine gone wrong one night, so, yeah. I’d seen enough.”

   “Wait, you ditched the hospital during a  _ quarantine?  _ Am I hearing you correctly?  _ That’s  _ why you dropped out?” Conrad asks, hands a little more tense than usual at the idea of Worth just abandoning people like that. Worth nods, though. 

  “Some lab thing happened and a bunch of people came in from outside th’ city. Whatever parasitic fuckery happened, it got loose. Started infectin’ staff an’ shit. Supposedly I was about t’  _ start  _ my rounds. Saw lights out at th’ hospital with some people just in hysterics outside, and turned around.” He scratches at his face for a moment, as if trying to remember something important. “Think they mentioned somethin’ about an institute a’ science. V-whatever. Doesn’t matter, fuck it. Still, another reason I should’ve left.”

  There’s a grim sort of stagnation in the air, the way you’d come to a confessional in a church- but the anonymity is gone. Besides two quasi-friends who barely fit the bill and the dry sputtering of an AC unit past its prime, there’s only the clear sense of nervousness regarding a certain someone who wasn’t in the clinic. Conrad breaks the wave of silence, with a slight larger hint of agitation that Worth hadn’t really expected to come out.

  “If that’s what you do, just run away and wash your hands of whatever you don’t want to put up with, why the hell are you still here? What tells anyone that you’re not just-“

   “That I’m not what? Gonna walk out on th’ kid an’ anyone else I’m watchin’ over?” Worth cuts in, fairly quickly with a sneer, defensive of his own ethic in a shocking sort of way. “I don’t run this shop ‘r do the things I do t’ get my rocks off, ya fuckin’ yuppie. I do it because I give a damn, and if I can keep at least four people alive, I’m doin’ a fucking  _ superb  _ job.”

   He claws at the bandage on his left wrist, a nervous tick and slight sense that any second now, something could go wrong. Horribly and irrevocably wrong. Conrad’s not making eye contact with him, but he makes a demand anyways. 

  “Get th’ flask out of my desk, open an exam room. I’m not  _ looking  _ for fuckin’ excuses. Make yourself useful.” 

  “You’re not going to just snap at me and not explain-“ 

  The retort is cut short by a glare, almost inhumanly hostile. “Did ya not hear me? Something’s about t’ happen, I can  _ feel  _ th’ sheer amount a bullshit comin’ from a block away. Set up an exam room like I asked so nicely fer, yeah? I got a second spidey-sense t’ supernatural fuckery these days.” 

   Conrad stands, begrudgingly obliging not for the sake of listening, rather the sake of getting away from what he could only think was Worth gone absolutely off the fucking deep end. If setting up that exam room was going to be the ticket out of that hellscape of a conversation, he’d take his sweet time figuring out what the hell  _ “setting up”  _ even meant.

   Worth paces, actually paces, in a ring around his desk before swinging a filing cabinet drawer open near the exam room, flipping through folders of content, mostly something about older works he’s done in the past: journal pages with bled ink and coffee- or blood, no, definitely blood- stains obscuring vague anatomical sketches and runic notes. He throws them at his desk, skittering and sliding across the surface and leaving some to drop into the chair. Whatever growing paranoia was coming onto him before has only mutated, and he itches at his wrist again, staring at the desk as if the floor would open up and swallow it whole.

  “Did me asking too many questions like, put you in factory setting, or are you finally having a stroke from all the-  _ whatever _ it is that you do?” Conrad asks, hands filled with an incredibly broken first aid kit, and Worth shakes his head in both negative response and an attempt to ground himself from aggressively staring at the notes on his desk.

  “Don’t like talkin’ about any of that shit, really. And so help me  _ God  _ if it’s a stroke, it’s about fifteen years too late.” He scratches at his jaw some, before turning back to the filing cabinet. “Ever since you an’ th’ others brought that goddamn seraph int’ my clinic, I can’t fuckin’ sleep. Let alone not feel like something's out to turn my bones int’ fucking  _ paste.”  _

_   “  _ You’re the one that attacked it, if I remember correctly.” Conrad says slowly, as if he’s trying to recall the exact events.

  “I do what I have t’ do t’ keep people alive. That bastard needed t’ be gone before it did any real-“

  He’s cut short by the sound of the front door barreling open, clattering against the wall and nearly breaking from the rusting hinges. The door stays open, and before he has time to process any kind of protest to the treatment of his front door, he notices Hanna leaning on his zombie friend, and  _ then  _ notices the blood. The absurdly sulfuric and deep red-black blood that doesn’t come from most wounds on their own, nobody had that much sulfur in their system naturally-

  But, from supernatural causes?

   “Shut the damn door.” He demands, accents affixed to ever syllable as if he can chew his way through the sentiment; realizing that he’s making demands to nobody in particular. Everyone is busy either helping or dying, and he has to answer to his own call if anything good is going to come from this. A gesture towards the ambiguously named zombie, he’d make a name if his thoughts weren’t going breakneck.  _ Put him there,  _ his hand implies as it points back to the exam room while he moves towards the door. Upon pulling it shut, he notices just how unaligned the bottom hinge is. In a better time, he’d speculate about how strong Hanna’s companion  _ really  _ is. 

  A quick check proves the mark from the night before to be entirely smudged and gone. He examines the alley, and the adjacent fire escape before slamming the door shut and bolting the lock again. He turns to see Conrad hanging around his desk, purposefully keeping out of the exam room as if the room itself carried a plague of its own. Worth doesn’t really ask, but realizes his face must have at least asked some variant of  _ “What the fuck?”  _ because Conrad answers him, anyways.

  “It- He smells like a dead animal, his blood. I’m not staying in there, besides the fact that you’ll kick us out anyways is always a pain in my ass. I’d rather be here where it only barely smells like a meth lab, and not in there where I’ll be dry heaving for hours.”

  “...Congratulations?” He says slowly, trying to figure out exactly what’s going on in that response and keeping an eye on him as he skirts past the desk. He swipes up a hodge-podge of the notes in a wicked clawing motion, clutching the papers in his fist with a sort of stubborn pride. “You sit pretty, an’ if anythin’ pops out of the front door, use the dictionary.” He advises, clapping Conrad on the shoulder before skirting into the exam room and shutting the door.

 The door opens again fairly soon, with the final spectator wandering back towards the desk, giving the door a worried stare. The undead stay in the clinic lobby watching for the door, while the living try to stay alive. 

 

* * *

 

 

  The air is colder in the exam room, frigid enough to actually warrant a level of fur on a coat, but it doesn’t stop Worth from feeling a sense of heated aggression and a bubbling rage upon actually removing Hanna’s shirt to see staples undone and runes slashed. To fix this, he’d need hours. He doesn’t have hours. Not with the sense of dread he’s grown.

  Hanna is mostly unresponsive under the knife, and Worth thinks back not to the incident in the theatre, but further. Before vampires, zombies, or any of that shit. The notes mark around a decade of distance between points A and B. The bloodless body of a barely-adult, and the wraith forms of two figures he doesn’t remember in an old apartment, electric and terrible. That’s when they met, wasn’t it? He stares at the notes again, fixating on a scrawl in the margin.

_   The body as a vessel cannot be dispelled or destroyed, but disrupted. Holy magic yet confirmed. DO NOT TEST. _

  He was more eloquent and succinct when he was younger. The notes find their way onto a tray of tools, and he moves to prod the original inscisons with a pair of forceps,  as if something alien would come out if poked. He, of course, is relieved for there to be nothing but the hollowness that he found those years ago. In this state, it’s a matter of closure.

  Suture the wounds, apply the runes, let the magic make up for all that he ignored in an anatomy class. 

  He’s almost done when Hanna sputters his way back to life, staples and sutures replaced with a haphazard sort of design. The coughing shocks him slightly, and he straightens out in an immediate defense. Outside, he can swear he hears someone rummaging through his desk.

  “H-hey there. You look absolutely  _ pissed.”  _

  Worth glares, hard. If Hanna’s good enough to poke fun, he’s good enough for Worth to take a moment and drink from the flask he had previously asked oh-so-nicely to have set in the room. 

  “Wanna tell me what you were doin’ pokin’ around angels, this time? Specifically th’ murdery ones.” He says, leaning against the tray table, eyes narrow and brandishing the medical skin-stapler as a tool of interrogation. Hanna stares blearily at him, and shakes his head.

  “Looking for that one you dispelled.” Hanna says, quiet, but almost calculating. A challenge, despite the fact he hadn’t even delivered the blow. “Except, you didn’t  _ just  _ dispel it, according to some apparent research I did. You completely smited- smote? You smote that thing back to kingdom come with a  _ scalpel.” _

  Worth squints, as if he’s looking for a punchline that’ll never make its way to the conversation. “What’s that got t’ do with you shakin’ th’ holy hornet’s nest?”

  “Well, besides  _ accidentally  _ finding another seraph who’s just absolutely peeved about it’s brood being one man short, I’m  _ kinda  _ getting a feeling that there’s something up with the big guy up stairs. But I can’t tell if you  _ knew  _ that, or if you  _ started  _ it.” Hanna explains, and the explanation is half accusation and half frustration in only a way that Worth could drag out of him. It gets a smile, though.

  “Yer a smart man, Cross. Might be the only time I feel like sayin’ somethin’ nice. That fucking seraph is dead as hell. You damn well know what ya were doin’, bringin’ it in my home.” He chides, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t  _ think  _ you were tryin’ t’ start shit, but I’ll be damned before ya make my job harder. It had t’ go.”

  “Did you bring me back just to nag me? Because I don’t think I’m conscious enough to have a dad-talk with you. It’s really uncomfortable, the staples itch, and you’re sounding more like you’re about to ground me over this whole-“

  The inquisitive complaint is cut short by a loud, incredibly posh  _ “Fuck!”  _  and the terrible noise of some half-choked explosion in the alley before the door makes a final protest and collapses off the hinges. Hanna scrambles to sit up, only to have Worth shove him back into the chair. He’s not going out where the dictionaries are blowing up, and Worth still has a few choice words he’d like to get in before he really has to go out and deal with his little problem.

  “They’re sending angels to earth, again.” Hanna says, wheezing from the pressure to his chest.  Worth nods, tossing the flask Hanna’s direction and pulling the scalpel from his coat pocket for a quick spot check, before putting it back in his pocket. 

  “They better have fuckin’ guns, then. I don’t take t’ havin’ my work undone an’ th’ door ripped off my home  _ lightly.  _ Or vampires blowin’ a hole in my clinic, but I asked him t’ do that fer me, so what can I say? Priss listens.” Worth catches himself mid ramble, and shakes his head- snapping out of a monologue of nothing but a shitlist with a few endearing marks.

  Hanna sniffs the cocktail with a sense of apprehension, retching away from the flask and staring at Worth, shaking his head. 

  “You’ve really just been waiting this whole time for something like this, haven’t you.” He says in a sort of defeated amusement, punctuated by a loud shriek and clatter of wings in the adjacent room. Worth can’t focus on being snippy with the cacophony next to him, and turns on his heel with a  _ stay fucking put  _ gesture to Hanna. Hanna rolls his eyes, but flops back against the exam table, staring hard at the door.

  They probably have worse than guns, but he can do them one better.

  One much, much better.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are exactly two major Easter-egg type things hiding out in here, because I really can't stop myself from wearing a tinfoil hat or referencing songs.


	4. Two Lights (and a Knife Fight)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   “Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death, I fear no evil for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.”   
> -Military Proverb, circa 1971.

  When the door opens, Worth can only fixate on how the door of his clinic is blown straight off the hinges, shrouded in a vibrating mass of locust while the smell of gunpowder fills the entire room. Conrad struggles to stand, mostly after being sent sprawling across the floor by the angel itself, and Worth swears a blue streak when he realizes the exact peril two undead and a seraph make.

  Everything is blinding light and screeching in tongues between every archaic language Worth recognizes, and he is not beyond dragging a bloodied and slightly singed vampire out from behind his desk and into the exam room- knowing full well he’s in for a hell of a rush without any assistance. He had already asked the zombie to return to the exam room and keep it’s contents inside the makeshift infant’s pen. With them gone, the gold eyes are on him, holy wings crooked and sweeping from floor to ceiling of the clinic, and he holds the scalpel in his fist like a weaponized prayer.

  They come into his home, they make a mess of his work, and start meddling in his affairs. Wounding people, threatening lives. But, by the way they stare, by the way it  _ stalls,  _ it’s been looking for him. Perhaps it knew about Hanna and their history, or that he could be sensed behind the exam room door, even with all the protective measures he had bothered to take. With the rune gone, this same angel who had seen him earlier could come into his own place of business and destroy anything he had put together. Decades of work, and for what? To be unraveled by the bastard chicken of the lord?

  “You stupid  _ motherfucker,  _ I told you t’ fuck off. And here ya are. You even remember a word I said, ya goddamn fantasy turkey?” Worth snipes, scalpel twirling from between his fingers in a bored, languid sort of way. He figures that if he’s going to die, might as well try to cowboy up before getting the light driven from his very soul. The seraph stares, unblinking, as if it can’t process the language.

_   “Holy holy holy holy-“ _

  Of fucking course it would, with its stupid mouthless spirit schtick, speak the common word of prayer to the lord and be absolutely fucking pointless to banter with. Fuck bantering, and fuck this particular order of angels.

  “Let me make it real clear, just how much I  _ hate  _ you.”

  The scalpel returns to his grip, firm and sure when it does the unthinkable and rips across the inside of his left wrist over the bare scar of a rune applied decades ago- something akin to the key of Solomon, but still white with horrid, horrid energy. It burns, wicked and hot when the blood runs and wets what gauze is left on his arm. Teeth bared, he doesn’t fixate on the heat from the scalpel or the blood, just the rage and exasperation from all of the collateral damage. He keeps eye contact.

  Was it impulsive, to destroy the first one? Definitely, but a necessary sort of evil when every person under your wing is directly threatened by the existence of these things.  How likely was it that the others would have died? 

  The very thought makes his teeth clench harder and his skin crawl. 

  Blood pools at the floor by his feet, going from a deeper red to something more akin to tar, then smoke. The seraph sees this, and the noise it makes is a sound of mourning, and Worth knows damn well that it didn’t expect this to happen. To go quietly, head hanging in defeat, maybe. But not with pitch smoke coming from the vein, or his own shadow becoming tangible, climbing his own body.

  It’s a heartbeat, and the sound of every bone breaking and realigning forms after decades of staying in another, hidden under the veil of shadow and caustic rage.

  What emerges isn’t human, but the vicious mockery of what humans may have been in the image of the lord. How crooked it’s body, lanky and shoulders cocked halfway with wings mangled and draped like the tail of a cloak across the floor as the eyes against the scapulars stared glassy and near-undead at the cluster of wings and light across the room. The head of the thing, this parody, separates into three masks: something humanoid like a mannequin designed to split apart and unveil a wicked inhumanity, the skull of a deer, and the unblinking face of a vulture- all figures white with the interruption of an old shattered halo strung around its face and neck, radiating not-quite-holy light.

  The angel, uncloaked and vengeful bares the scalpel like a stake, metal warping in hand to some longer vorpal blade. In another tongue, he invokes the name of the other,  _ Apollyon _ , and Apollyon invokes his name in the same tongue.  _ Helel,  _ it says,  _ Shining One.  _

  The two of the same brood stare to each other, and from the shield of the wings, blades are born held by the illusion of hands through the bodies of locust- screaming and pestilent. Apollyon swings first, wings pushing harshly against the stale air and driving the first blow through the air, only to clatter against the edge of the older blade. They trade blows, equal in their pursuits, screaming ancient language like a curse.

_   How could you do this? Do you understand what you have done? _

_   I haven’t done anything. _

  They are barely visible behind the violent flutter of their wings, limbs and locust and blades crashing into each other like some series of apocalyptic plague that will never reach its full potential. It isn’t until the youngest barrels the eldest against the door to the exam room and slams his body against it, making demands and screeching holy obscenities in the name of their father. The slip of a hand unlatched the exam room door, and then they seperate from the door and ready themselves again.

  Apollyon readies it’s strike again, blade primed. The attack lands, cruel and guttural through the chest of the other angel, but that doesn’t stop the warped edge of another blade sliding through the core of the seraph, shaking hand grabbing a wing to pull it forward and grasp the core of light between the wall of pleated primaries.

_   Memento mori,  _ says the eldest with one hand curled against the bones of a wing and the other with the blade driven through it’s core.

  There is a bloody shriek, reserved for the unholy or dying holy beings as its body incinerates, immolated by some excess mark of light until there is nothing but ash remaining- the shape of wings scarred into the tile as if some nuclear meltdown had etched the death into the clinic. The locust disappear from the door, gone in a haze of smoke. The eldest stays in the center of the room, shorter blade still lodged firmly through his sternum, stuck like a dart in a board.

  His wing shifts, trying to find some sort of comfort before yanking the blade out in an aggressive sort of fashion. His hand finds purchase on the hilt, tense and aggressive as he tries to relax, only to hear a resounding “ _ What the absolute fuck?”   _ that almost causes him to slip.

  The blade slides from the wound with a startled sort of struggle as he whips his head to face the source of the noise, with the blade dropping to the floor the minute the angel is again consumed by a darkness and returned through the sound of cracking bones and shifting physicality. 

  In its place, an incredibly agitated and bloody human figure.

  “So help me  _ god  _ if I find out you jackasses have been behind me th’ whole time, I’ll-“

  “You’re gonna what, bleed on us? Hanna asks with an incredulous sort of smirk. “We only came out in time to see you smite something, what was it? Apollyon? Abaddon? Your accent totally makes your Enochian almost indecipherable, dude. Try annunciating next time?”

  Worth stares hard, hand clapped over the incredible slice in the center of his chest as if it would stop bleeding or the concerning amount of pain breathing causes.

 “ Hanna Falk Cross _ ,” _ Worth enunciates between grit teeth, sounding more like a particularly bitter father rather than an angel with a bloody ravine through his sternum. “Don’t think fer a second I ain’t above kickin’ yer ass, since yer well enough t’ fuck with me.” 

  Hanna winces at the dreaded full name attack, but can’t help laugh at the threat while Worth tries to peel his hand away from the blooming stain of blood on his shirt. “I’m just saying, with an accent like  _ that,  _ with what?  _ Greek _ ? You really don’t speak Latin, huh?”

  There’s a stall in the air, Worth’s expression the equivalent of radio static before taking his hand off his chest for a moment- just long enough to smear a red-toned ink smudge across Hanna’s arm before it returns to its place covering a blatant fissure. It results in a groan from Hanna, an incoherent sputter of disgust.

  “I  _ predate  _ language, fucker.”

  Worth states slowly, fingers tensing over the wound. He does a headcount, completely aware that the majority of his merry band of ongoing migraines haven’t had much experience with angels. The zombie’s fine, if not giving him a sidelong glance that implies some direct worry about the wound currently seeping blood through his fingers. But his attention does move to Conrad, knowing full well how he was practically dragged through the clinic barely an hour before.

  “You jus’ gonna stand there gawkin’ at me, or did Abby knock yer head a lil’ too hard? Status report, ma’am.”

  “The- I’m- I can’t-“ Is all that Conrad manages to sputter out, eyes moving to the very blatant excess of blood on Worth’s hand and wrist. “I’m fine, maybe mildly concussed, but what in the  _ hell  _ are you?” 

  Worth grins at that, the sheer befuddlement and almost ultimate sense that he’s finally made him speechless after a few years of trying his damndest. He turns to walk back to the exam room, and answers with a vague hand wave. He points up, down, then shrugs, shutting the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

  Hanna makes a point out of ducking out when the arguing starts, feeling well enough to steer Orpheus through the clinic with a plethora of “I’ll tell you when we get outside” remarks when the yelling finally hikes up to a more disturbing-the-peace level of volume over the healing process of stitches and other injuries held by some magical weapon. The minute the idea of an altered healing factor or effectively suturing bone comes into place, they’re out the doorway and decidedly listening a lot less.

  “It doesn’t need t’ be covered, already stitched it up.” Worth gripes somewhat loudly, swatting at pale hands armed with a ring of gauze and tape. “If yer comin’ on t’ me, just say it an’ lose th’ medical kink.” 

  “The concept of a medical kink  _ really  _ makes me suspicious about your moonlighting as a medical hack. Now shut up and let me help, or start answering the questions I’m asking.” Conrad’s protest is somewhat weak, more or less in all-consuming agitation at knowing fairly well what just happened, but also in the fact that he was kept out of some ongoing loop. Worth does stop protesting however, and allows a pair of incredibly cold hands to paw around where the ghost of a bruise starts to form. He does slip his hand up, still somewhat bloodied with broken seal exposed and presses it against the side of Conrad’s neck where a burn had vaguely bloomed. There’s a noticeable wince, and Worth frowns.

  “Think ya know what I am.” He says, trying to hold his grip against the burn without clawing or needlessly causing friction to tear and blister the injury. To the untrained eye, it’s an act if bracing himself or fighting back against treatment he refuses to accept; in reality, he’s a dick who’s got a bleary outline of a plan. “I’m th’ oldest motherfucker in a single universe of ‘em.”

  Conrad doesn’t necessarily peel his hand off the burn, too fixated on covering the ramshackle stitch work, but there’s a slight  _ tsk  _ of disappointment in that answer. “Quit with the epithets, and just spit it out so I can make sure you’ve been lying about shit this whole time.”

  “Fine.  _ Helel, Shining One, Morningstar,  _ any of those stupid fuckin’ titles ring a bell?” Worth says, still not moving from his position against the old exam table. 

  “You’re satan.” Conrad says, hands freezing against the newly dressed wound.

  “Do I look like I got three heads- don’t answer that.” He snips back, moving slightly to get a better look at the burn. “Satan’s all frozen solid in th’ bottom a’ Hell. I’m jus’ a bastard with no respect fer th’ laws a’ perpetual servitude. I’m  _ me _ , not some stupid fuckin’ goat.”

  “So, you’re an  _ angel.”  _ His tone rises in almost more disbelief than before, hand finally resting on top of Worth’s in a defensive suspicion. “Stop that.”

  “Were an angel, until people got a lil’ mad at me fer doin’ things angels ought not t’ do. Like fuck with shit in Eden. An’ no, ‘m not gonna stop figurin’ out how Abby went an’ roasted a good few square inches on yer damn neck.” Worth says, refusing to move his hand, thumb now moving in small attentive circles.

  “So, Lucifer.” 

  “Yessum?”

  “You’ve been the literal first-to-fall angel this whole damn time, and didn’t think to mention it until  _ right  _ before people almost started getting killed? That’s your  _ grand  _ plan? Sit around and play dress up until your siblings start trying to murder us?” Conrad gripes, and Worth makes a point to let go of his neck before any stray fists manage to get close to him. That level of soft-boiling rage isn’t something he bares witness to often. 

  “Ya do realize up until now, you’ve all been fuckin’ fine, right? Yer not any more dead that ya were when we met, hell, you  _ know  _ I’ve been keepin’ Hanna alive fer awhile now. I don’t got a damn reason t’ be broadcastin’ that I’m around t’ all th’ others who want me outta th’ picture. I’m a patron saint fer lost causes an’ th’ undead magic-y types.”  He explains this with an exhaustion that only comes from explaining his motive for the upteenth time in his lifetime, arms crossed over his chest, more irate than understanding.

  “You still  _ lied.”   _ He says, defensive.

  “About what? Lilith’s a quasi-succubus who moonlights as a swimsuit model t’ get off with humans. I  _ did  _ go t’ Langone cause I was curious. An’ you better not say I lied about m’ name, because I will clock ya in th’ nose faster than ya can say a quick prayer.” Worth makes a point of standing to his full height, a habit to invoke some sort of seriousness in his tone. However, his body rebels, and the statement only works for a moment before he curls in on himself slightly. Conrad gives him a look, confusion or concern that Worth can’t quite pick out.

  “Now that I really got ya quiet, what th’ hell did ya follow me in here for?” 

  Conrad bites his lip before sighing, hands thrown up in a  _ whatever  _ sort of motion. “You looked like you were going to pass out, and I’m pretty sure you weren’t going to let Hanna anywhere near you with that gaping hole in your chest.” 

  “Glad t’ know ya jus’ wanted t’ fulfil some dream ya had about touchin’ me.” Worth snorts, grin peering out from behind a grimace of pain when he moves away from the exam table. “Normally I’d ask fer dinner, first.”

  “Ugh- no. No, you’re not going to make me being nice to you  _ weird.”  _

  “If I didn’ know better, I’d think that ya might actually like me, ya absolute fuckin’ conundrum.” He teases him, swiping a box of cigarettes from a nearby tray and using it as a prop to gesture at Conrad with. “Yer welcome, by th’ way. Know it kills ya t’ say somethin’ friendly with me in earshot, so I’ll save ya th’ trouble.”

  Conrad squints, realizing how suspect the comment is and choosing not to set himself up with a response. 

  “Yer neck, smartass. Quit lettin’ people get that thing, or ya might end up decapitated. Already died once t’ yer Achilles-Carotid, probably shouldn’ try it again.”

  Conrad raises his hand to touch at the place where the burn had been, no longer stinging to the touch. 

  “What’d you do?” He asks, cautious.

  “I don’ know.” Worth muses with all the twisted humor he can give. “Somethin’ about touching, though.”

  “I’m leaving. We’re done. You’ve proved you’re still  _ you,  _ as much as I really wish you had just been fucking with us the whole time. I  _ really  _ don’t have to listen to you babble on about innuendo.”  Conrad is halfway out the exam room when the final call cuts through the air.

  “Blood’s still in th’ cooler under my desk.”

  The exam room door slams, albeit not as intensely as he would expect. When he comes out of the room after a few minutes of scrounging for his belongings, the cooler proves to be empty and set on the edge of his desk. The front door propped against the doorway in a ramshackle sort of fashion, making damn sure to act as a reminder that the entire debacle took place.

  He’s going to need to fix that, too.

  
  
  
  
  



	5. A Ten Year Con in the Eyes of God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A combination prologue, epilogue, and missing link for the rest of the story.

 When news went down about some apartment going up in flames on the outside edge of the city, Worth told himself that it damn well wasn’t anything he needed to get involved with.  _ It’s rumors, human tabloid bullshit,  _ he thinks to himself as he passes a trio of young teens out past their curfew. He sticks around an older bodega, speaking in mostly broken language with the shopkeeper; the two of them debating over better brands of cheaper cigarettes until the spasming tv in the corner behind the counter actually started shifting. The screen slants, telenovela warping with the electric rage of any nameable lightning god. Throw a fucking dart, and it’d be appropriate. 

 He hands some change to the man at the counter, pocketing a box of menthols and calling it a day, before taking a good hard stop-and-stare towards the edge of town where the light on the horizon was not red, but blue. Something inside him shrieks bloody murder, and he clenches the filter of the cigarette between his teeth. He starts moving towards the light and the sound persists like a panicky radio, eyes forward and fixated towards the light when people looked at him- and he ignores their very existence in this vast shared space. They don’t follow, they don’t even murmur about the cobalt streak pulsating through the highest window of the complex, and then he starts doubting the humanity of those teens and the fire.

 Getting up closer only proves to show the light gone full electric, nobody at the foot of the building or screaming ground level- perfect innocuous oblivion for everybody who isn’t in unit 4301, judging by the corroded “4” marking the building, the lovely epileptic-style light blustering through the third floor window. The unit stairwells are open freely, and Worth makes a point of slowly climbing up them, shrill warning signals and lighting giving him both a reason to stay firmly planted outside until everything was over  _ and  _ break the door down to the apartment. He hates his sense of backwater altruism in these cases, because of course his morbid curiosity gets him tangled up in the most inconceivable bullshit. 

 Of course it would get him wrapped up in this fake heroic nonsense, wings fully splayed behind him to help his notoriously awful balance when he forces the door open, splintering the handle from the wood and forcing himself right into the source of all the rave-light fuckery. When the first glaring light subsides he can make the shape of some child on the floor, still and unconscious, blood pooled around a chalk and ink ring on the floor. Another flash, and Worth makes out the clear shape of two distinct ghosts a match of male and female shapes from what he can barely discern. He steps between the figures and the younger child- more noticeably a smaller teenager up close- and in a moment, abandons his body for it’s full terror and obscure bloodlust.

 Oh, how he fucking hates ghosts and their intangibility. The specific way of fighting and dispelling, it drove him mad in Babylon, and it absolutely infuriates him beyond belief now. To strike the ghosts with his blade and say a prayer so cloyingly divine he might as well have washed his mouth out with soap afterwards, it exhausts him in such a way that returning to a more human and amicable size makes him collapse for a moment. He lands ungracefully by the corpse, no, body- no, vague corpse- of the teen. Worth sits up, rolling the unknown onto his back and looking at the vacant ravine dug through his torso like a staircase. Behind the tar and scorching, he can faintly see the beating of a heart. Fragile and slow.

 He hadn’t necessarily taken note of how bright the kid’s hair is, but in the darkness it marks a certain redness that makes his eyes hurt, just a touch. 

 Either way, he draws his hand through the fleshwound, invasive and debatable in the levels of disgust after pawing around in cadavers for the sake of learning just what made humans tick when he  _ attempted  _ giving a shit in medical school. His hand makes a pass against the slowing muscle, and through some vague focus, it sputters into a steadier, livelier pace. Worth pulls his hand back just in time for the nameless boy to start and sit up, staring him dead in the eyes in the darkness of the room. He doesn’t scream, but the neon sort of blue in his eyes gives Worth a bad feeling that something much worse had happened than a failed ghostbusting attempt. He’s a little calm for someone who was just resurrected with a little “debatable angelic” magic.

 “Where are-“ he starts, voice shaken and nervous. Worth doesn’t waste time.

 “Dead an’ gone back t’ purgatory where ghosts  _ go.  _ Now, I’m gonna peel ya off this floor an’ take ya t’ go get yer… everythin’ stitched up. Christ.”

 He doesn’t necessarily mean to scoop the bleary child off the floor in one fell swoop like he weighs nothing, but he does anyways, and decides he’ll be carrying him for the whole way. The walk isn’t too far, and he’s not really beligured so much as morbidly curious about this redhead and his relationship with the ghosts.

 “What’re you, some guardian angel?” The kid asks in the delirium of blood loss or generational comedy Worth doesn’t quite get, but he doesn’t answer, either. 

 He comes back to the clinic, though the level of  _ clinical- _ ness could more or less be argued that it’s just an old office with an unsettling and half broken down gurney as an exam table in a back room. The front door is left wide open, and he takes note of the old Camry still left in the alley making it hard enough for him to siddle through the door with his arms full. He sputters a few curses when the door swings shut on him the first time, the second only barely clipping his leg in the door. He looks up to see someone staring back at him, mouth slightly agape in a sense of  _ holy fucking shit. _

_  “ _ I’m gonna need you to tell me that he’s  _ not  _ dead. Or that I’m just seeing shit-“ the level of nervous laughter almost irritates Worth more than the body in his arms, but he gives a scoff as he nods to the ever-present exam room in that sort of  _ follow me  _ discretion. 

 It isn’t until after a copious amount of staples and sedative magic have been administered before he finally starts talking. 

 “Christ, Monty. Goddamn crossroad demon an’ ya fuckin’ act like I dragged in some gored hooker. Think ya seen worse in Pandemonium, ya fuckin’ putz.” Worth gripes, wiping his hands on the surgical tray. Lamont grimaces, peering around to get a good look at the kid.

 “Earlier, you mentioned something about-“

 “Ghosts? Yeah, summonin’ circle with a shitty salt ring. Some runes, too.” 

 “You brought a goddamn  _ necromancer  _ back here? Look, I get that you kind of demanded you get the stakes in lording over the souls of the undead and mages-“ Lamont starts, trying to maintain eye contact. Worth doesn’t even bother.

 “Yeah, yeah. Yadda yadda rules, I don’ give a rats ass about th’ whole honor code with necromancy an’ blood magic. He’s a fuckin’  _ kid. _ ” Worth snaps at the end, and Lamont gives him one of those knowing-bastard type smiles, because he damn well knows exactly what’s happening. It fades after a minute, though. 

 “They’re going to know what you did. You got any bright plans on how to dig yourself out of this, or am I going to have to go on another library run for your scheme?” 

 “Don’ worry about it, I got a plan. You stick t’ doin’ what Lilith told ya t’ do, an’ I’ll keep bein’ a pain in yer ass.” Worth grins, swiping the scalpel from the tray, waving it in Lamont’s direction. “I ever steer ya wrong?”

 “300 BC. You said going to Jerusalem would be a neat little venture and then we found Solomon. You remember how that worked out?”

 Worth can’t help but give a sly cackle.

 “Sure, sure. Blame th’ angel.  _ God  _ yer such a fuckin’ stereotype, ‘mont. Big fuckin’ baby when it gets down t’ th’ nitty gritty bullshit.”

 “You said the same thing when we-  _ Luce _ . What are you-“

 The exam room door shuts with a walloping slam, and the rancorous laughing of one particular fallen angel could be heard on the outside of the door.

 

* * *

 

 He hasn’t exactly had a chance to sleep in the full glory of his body being unrestricted by mortal confines in almost a decade at this point. So when Worth gets the rare, private opportunity to sleep through a Saturday morning at his desk with all wings splayed out like a ramshackle cowl, he takes it. There’s a sort of comfort to it that he can’t quite place besides some near-childish fixation on being both covered and comfortable. Or, rather, he places it firmly in the belief of a slight hangover and a hatred of the fluorescent bulb about to blow out above his head.

 When the large slab of plywood that masquerades as a door-cover moves away from the wall, clearly no regard paid to the sticky-note with “ _ FUCK OFF”  _ scrawled across that was stamped to the door like a note of protest in a church, the eyes on his wings look blindly towards the sound. A fruitless, but somewhat unnerving endeavor for whoever’s on that other side.

 “God, that never stopped being creepy.” An incredibly familiar voice rings through, followed by one slightly less familiar, but always more energetic.

 “Dude, he looks like some freaky eldritch thing! It’s wild, like, I  _ knew  _ he was an angel of some kind but I never really got to  _ see  _ it before now, y’know?” 

 The wings unfurl and Worth sits up at his desk, blinking back at the two men in front of him with a noticeable glower, a perfect sense of intrigue and disgust. 

 “Yer th’ loudest goddamned sods this side a’ Newark. I didn’ order nothin’, ‘mont.” Worth mutters, before getting a good look at Hanna sans an undead entourage. “An’ yer down a whole fuckin’ undyin’ lollipop guild, what’s that about?”

 “Yeah, good morning to you, too, Luce.” Lamont’s all sardonic smiles and content with leaning on his desk, cuffing him over the back of the head. “Lilith said to say hi, except it was more like ‘Tell that dickhead to  _ never  _ use a seal of Solomon again’? So, she’s thinking’ about you.”

 “Oh, they’re not here because it’s like, seven in the morning? Elias decided he’d try to do some more reading up on angels since you sort of sparked a little intrigue in him about the afterlife and all your history.”

 Worth stretches, wings crooked and splayed behind him before folding into nothingness in their glamour, and he shrugs.

 “Tell Lil I don’ have t’ do jack an’ I’ll bind my grace any damn day a’ th’ week. An’ if it’s seven in th’ mornin’, I’m gonna kick ya both out on th’ basis a’ th’ fact that I don’t just get up fer small talk. Don’t care how long I known ya.” There’s a distinctive point, flickering between both parties. He figures Lamont would just stop by to stop by, they’ve known each other long enough. Hanna, though? It’s always something with Hanna. “What th’ hell d’ya want?”

 There’s a nervous chuckle from Hanna when the spotlight of the conversation rapidly pans back to him, and Worth is pretty sure he somehow picked it up from Lamont over the years. Either way, he watches, calculating.

 “It’s about Adelaide.”

 Worth shoots a look at Lamont, a damn miasma of smug and irritation that begs ‘ _ Not my division’  _ in the quietest way possible. Lamont’s response is more of a restrained smile-grimace, because he knows full well what Worth’s about to say. 

 “Y’mean th’ broad ‘mont’s been fuckin’ fer recon ever since  _ someone  _ let ‘er outta vampire jail? Th’ hunter magnet? Nope, haven’t heard a damn thing.”

 Hanna’s jaw drops slightly, then tightens when he steels himself for a retort. “Last time I asked about her, you looked at me like I had three eyes. What gives?”

 Lamont shrugs. “He looks at  _ everyone  _ like that.”

 Worth gives an audible  _ tsk  _ sound before fishing around in his pocket for a cigarette out of sheer irate boredom from the way this conversation seems to spin itself, and he shakes his head.

 “Lil’ an’ ‘mont here both fuckin’ put a seal on that bitch ‘bout a decade ago, on commission from th’, what? Alliance? Court?” He stops himself to think of the correct word, only to abandon the notion entirely. “Fuck it. Royal clusterfuck a’ vamps wanted ‘er gone, so they went ahead an’ did what they could.”

 “I was just going to ask if you two have seen her since that incident with the hunter, but apparently you got one better, huh? Who’s Lil, anyways? Think I could pay her a visit, or a phone call?” Hanna beams slightly, a small amount of excitement bubbling over at the new name and, effectively, new lead on a case he had necessarily bungled at the get-go.

 “‘s my sister.” The statement is flat, head cocked sideways. “She don’t really do phones, but ya could pro’lly find ‘er out in th’ red light district.” 

 Lamont snickers at the slight blooming smirk on Worth’s face, and the absolute flustered paling of Hanna’s at the very mention of the morph from  _ sister  _ to  _ red light district. _

 “Y’know, I’m gonna- I’ll think- I’ll go if Elias isn’t busy and  _ maybe  _ if Conrad isn’t, but he’s not really good with women? But neither am I. Maybe Toni? Or is that weird to take her- I’ll get back to you on that.” Hanna does an immaculate sort of backpedaling through his stuttering and though-correction, shoes squeaking against tile before finally slipping out the doorway and away from the gaze of the two older immortals, snickering their way to a short nirvana.

 “Are you going to tell him she’s not  _ really  _ related to you by blood?” Lamont says, brow raised with a genuine sort of curiosity that begs for an answer he already knows he’s going to get. “Or that you’re talking about Lilith of  _ Eden?” _

 Worth tilts back in his chair, staring at the ceiling and the cluster of cobwebs collecting there, along with the ghost of angelic shadows burnt into the walls- spread further than he remembered in the first place.

 “He’s smart enough, he’ll figure it out.”

 For the first time in a long time, he’s looking forward to getting back to work- even in the awful, early hours of the morning.


End file.
